CAREER: Decoding differential protein phosphorylation patterns at the nexus between biotic and abiotic stress responses

粮食稳定对社会稳定至关重要，要成功满足预计的全球粮食需求，就需要增加作物产量。减少病虫害造成的作物损失对这一努力至关重要，环境压力加剧了这一挑战。维持安全的粮食供应需要采取综合办法，其中战略性和强有力地增强作物植物抗性发挥着重要作用。为了满足持续提高植物对病虫害和病原体抗性的社会需求，该项目将有助于我们(1)了解作物物种间控制抗病的保守调控机制的基本知识，并了解这些过程如何影响作物对其他环境胁迫的反应。为了增加对更大社区的科学可及性，研究活动与广泛的教育计划相结合，旨在满足第一代大学转校生的需求，并提高对植物科学和生物学机会的认识和兴奋。该计划包括(1)创建转学生研究机会和方向（ROOTS）计划，通过培训转学生基本实验室技术并将他们与研究实验室职位联系起来，提高转学生在科学领域的保留率；(2)扩大与研究相结合的本科实验课程，积极吸引学生参与可发表的研究；(3)与当地社区领导人合作，支持小学社区花园开展以植物为基础的教育丰富活动。从表面上看，模式触发免疫看似简单：模式识别受体对外来分子的识别激活信号来调节转录并诱导免疫反应。在现实中，信号网络是极其复杂的，具有动态互联的调控层，导致植物细胞过程的广泛重构。了解这种植物免疫成分的动态调控是如何发生的，并与其他信号通路交叉，对于制定增强生物抗性的策略至关重要。此外，从模式植物到作物物种的策略转移产生了额外的复杂性，因为并非所有的调节机制都是保守的，特别是在双子叶和单子叶植物之间。为了应对这些挑战，研究人员筛选了玉米和拟南芥免疫信号的早期调节因子，确定了两种保守的核酸结合蛋白，它们通过磷酸化介导的功能开关，作为生物和非生物胁迫的双功能调节因子。通过应用于玉米和拟南芥的综合生化和遗传方法，这些见解将用于定义这些新发现的蛋白质调节生物和非生物胁迫的全球机制，测试靶向增强抗性的策略，并扩展磷酸化依赖性免疫调节剂的注释。一旦完成，这项工作将有助于对免疫信号重新配置表型的分层机制的基本理解，并阐明提高植物抗性的靶向策略。这些活动还将支持研究与教育和外联的长期结合，通过提供机会和提高对植物生物学的认识来加强科学界和更大的社区。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Food stability is essential to societal stability, and to successfully provide for projected global food demands, increased crop production will be required. Reduction of crop losses to disease and pests is critical to this effort, with the challenge potentiated by environmental stresses. Sustaining a secure food supply will require integrated approaches, with strategic and robust enhancement of crop plant resistance playing an important role. To address this societal need of durable improvement of plant resistance to pests and pathogens this project will contribute to our (1) fundamental knowledge of conserved regulatory mechanisms controlling disease resistance across crop species, and an understanding of how these processes impact crop responses to other environmental stresses. To increase scientific accessibility to the larger community, research activities are integrated with an extensive educational plan designed to meet the needs of first-generation college transfer students and to promote awareness and excitement surrounding opportunities in the plant sciences and biology. This plan includes (1) Creation of the Research Opportunities and Orientation for Transfer Students (ROOTS) program to enhance transfer student retention in the sciences by training them in basic laboratory techniques and connecting them with research lab positions, (2) Expansion of a research-integrated undergraduate laboratory course to actively engage students in publishable research and (3) Partnership with a local community leader to support an elementary school community garden with plant-based educational enrichment activities.On the surface, pattern-triggered immunity is deceptively simple: recognition of foreign molecules by pattern recognition receptors activates signaling to modulate transcription and induce immune responses. In reality, the signaling network is exceedingly complex, with dynamic interconnected regulatory layers that cause broad reconfiguration of plant cellular processes. Understanding how this dynamic regulation of plant immune components occurs and intersects with other signaling pathways is essential for formulating strategies to enhance biotic resistance. Furthermore, transfer of strategies from model plants to crop species generates an additional layer of complexity, as not all regulatory mechanisms are conserved, particularly between dicot and monocot species. To meet these challenges, a screen for early regulators of immune signaling in both maize and Arabidopsis was performed, identifying two conserved nucleic acid-binding proteins serving as bifunctional regulators of biotic and abiotic stresses with phosphorylation-mediated functional switching. Through integrated biochemical and genetic approaches applied to both maize and Arabidopsis, these insights will be leveraged to define global mechanisms by which these newly discovered proteins modulate biotic and abiotic stresses, test strategies for targeted enhancement of resistance, and expand annotation of phosphorylation-dependent immunoregulators. Upon completion, this work will contribute to foundational understanding of layered mechanisms of immune signaling that reconfigure phenotypes, and illuminate targeted strategies for improving plant resistance. These activities will also support long-term integration of research with education and outreach, strengthening the scientific and larger community by providing opportunity and increasing awareness of plant biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.